Citibank has been sued by the self-proclaimed victim of the crypto-shock scam, accusing the bank of neglecting dangerous red flags that allow the scammers to make money for $20 million.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in a federal court in Manhattan, plaintiff Michael Zidell claimed Citibank was “blind to its statutory obligations and obligations” when he could deposit millions of dollars into a bank accountable fraudster.
Zidell said he sent $20 million to scammers through dozens of transactions at multiple banks, including nearly $4 million in accounts held at Citibank.
The complaint says that the deal is part of a well-crafted romantic scam, often called Pig slaughterwhere fraudsters use fake characters to create romantic online relationships with their victims, use it to get them into fraudulent investment plans.
Facebook romance leads to scam NFT investment
Zidell said the scam started in early 2023 when he was contacted by “Carolyn Parker” on Facebook, a claimed business owner who formed a “friendly, social relationship but then felt a romantic lover.”
A month after the relationship, Parker told Zidell that he should invest in non-killable tokens because she claimed she had made millions and brought him to the trading platform.
Zidell decided to invest in NFT and transferred it to various bank accounts provided by him through the trading platform. Due to a large number of clients’ deposits, he was told that multiple banks were needed.
He said he sent 43 transfers to various bank accounts over the next few months, but by late April, the platform’s website “suddenly disappeared” along with his millions of people.
Citibank ignores scam warning signs, lawsuit demands
The complaint accused Citibank of handling 12 transfers, totaling about $4 million, and the company handed over to a company called Guju Inc.
It also accused the bank of ignoring “red flags” in Guzhu’s account and claimed that “a large amount of funds, among other things, should trigger the bank’s investigation into suspicious activity.”
“(Citibank) failed to implement sufficient securities measures to detect obvious suspicious transactions, and failed to monitor the account even if the large amount of Yuanjin was transferred from trusts and other individuals in suspicious ways and transferred from accounts,” the complaint said.
Zidell said Citibank assisted and taught the so-called scam and alleged that the bank was negligent and claimed that it was “responsible to exercise appropriate caution when monitoring suspicious transactions”.
Cointelegraph has contacted Citibank for comment.
Romantic scams are multi-billion dollar scams
Last year, Romance Scammers Stealed more than $5.5 billion Of the 200,000 confirmed cases, security company Cyvers told Cointelegraph in February.
Chain Analytics estimates in February that all types of crypto scams stole about $9.9 billion in 2024, but that could increase to $12.4 billion as analytics firms identify more crypto wallets bound by scams.
Earlier this month, U.S. authorities said they had Confiscated $225 million This year, an operation led by the Senter Service was linked to the pig slaughter, the agency’s largest cryptocurrency seizure ever.
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